The Suri Chief Explains God

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He captures you with his eyes. Two days we spent with those green-blue irises that pull you into the depths of some ancient unrecorded history. They belong to Bologedung, the major chief of one of two Suri subgroups. Right away you know he is the chief, with the baboon hair hat, ornamental spear, and a set of twirled grey whiskers on either side of his chin.

“We have come here to learn from you,” I explained through two interpreters, English-Amahric then Amahric-Suri. “We have come to learn the Suri ways.”

“You are my children. You are my family. Welcome,” Bologedung says with his penetrating, yet grandfatherly stare. “Take the information I give and tell others out in the world.”

As the conversation turned to God, the chief explains, “I am in God like I was in my mother before I was born. God created everything.”

“What does God look like?”

Bologedung’s reply puzzled me until later that night. “God starts as a young boy. Then he grows to become an older boy, finally a man.”

“So, does God die?” The words ping-ponged back and forth between translators.

“No, he never dies.”

I didn’t get it. But then, ancient knowledge often takes time to reveal itself.

For me it came after a chicken curry dinner that night. After the wonderful meal she prepared, Ulrike, the region’s thin, gentle native-language teacher, mentioned that her Christian religion was born of the Judeo-Christian historic line of Israel. Rich and ancient, but aren’t there seeds for that system of beliefs? I thought of Gilgamesh and other ancient recorded stories. And what of all the earlier oral stories never recorded, like those of Bologedung?

Perhaps Bologedung’s growing-up God is an analogy for both an individual and mankind. More later.

And this was only the beginning of what the chief told us.